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Short Stories, Irish literature, Classics, Modern Fiction and Contemporary Literary Fiction, The Japanese Novel and post Colonial Asian Fiction, Yiddish Literature, The Legacy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and quality historical novels are some of my Literary Interests

Monday, May 23, 2011

"The Blind Dog" by R. K. Narayan and "Magudi Days-Rereading the Master" by Jhumpa Lahiri

"The Blind Dog" by R. K. Narayan (1947, 6
pages)

"Malgudi Days-Rereading the Master" by
Jhumpa Lahiri (2008, 5 pages)

A Wonderful Short
Story

and

A deeply felt
appreciation for R. K. Narayan

In his brilliant (if flawed) The Lonely Voice-A Study of the Short Story Frank O'Connor tells us that a short story
should have exposition, development, drama, focus on people from
"submerged groups" and express the central loneliness of the human
experience. If we observe for the sake of discussion these criterion
then "The Blind Dog" by R. K. Narayan (1906 to 2001-Chennai, India)
is a perfect short story. In just as few pages in beautiful prose
Narayan creates a complete world. In the opening paragraph the
basics of the story are laid out for us.

A blind beggar sits in his spot collecting alms
from passer just as he has done for years. Everyday a woman drops
him off at his spot and takes him home. We also meet a very undistinguished
masterless village dog who lives from garbage and roams free.

Now both story lines come together in two interrelated

dramatic developments.

The woman that takes care of the beggar

dies. The dog is captured or takes up

with the beggar and learns to help him increase his

earnings. If someone passes the beggar by without

giving a donation the dog chases them down and barks and threatens them until they give the beggar something. The beggar begins to do much better and his neighbors in the market become jealous. The Dog begins to long for the "good old days".

A second dramatic development occurs when the

dog either escapes or is released by someone with

malicious intent. Narayan masterfully completes the

story with developments in the lives of both central

persons in the story, the dog and the beggar.

O'Connor felt that the best authors stories arose from their own experiences. Narayan would for years take

a three hour daily walk, stopping to talk to the

people he met. There is no feel at all of the

inauthentic in Narayan's stories.

Jumpa Lahia (I have posted on five of her wonderful

short stories) has supplied the introduction for a

collection of Narayan's short stories, Malgudi Days. Her essay was first published in The Boston Review.

I urge anyone at all interested in Narayan or the short story to read her essay.

Here are her some of her thoughts on the place of

Narayan in the short story genre:

"Setting aside his plentiful and remarkable novels, Narayan firmly occupies a seat in the pantheon of 19th- and 20th-century short-story geniuses, a group that includes Chekhov, O. Henry, Frank O’Connor, and Flannery O’Connor. Another kindred spirit is Maupassant, whose tightly coiled narratives share with Narayan’s a mastery of compression, of events quickly unfolding and lives radically changing in paragraphs that can be numbered on two hands. With Narayan as with Maupassant there is that purity of voice, the realism and constraint. Both explore the frustrations of the middle class, the precariousness of fate, the inevitable longings that so often lead to ruin. Both create portraits of everyday life and share a vision that is unyielding and unpitying."

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